Carla Neggers - Heron's Cove

“He’s this likable, chain-smoking former Soviet helicopter pilot who cobbled together a small fleet of aging planes and made a fortune hauling cargo. Most of the cargo was legitimate, but he also had access to stockpiles of Soviet-era weapons, from Kalashnikov rifles to shoulder-fired missiles. He tucked them in with the legitimate cargo. No problem finding buyers.”

Yank turned from the French doors. “Your point?”

“Along the way, Bulgov developed a taste for modern art. Emma found out and we finally had him in the U.S. and arrested him. That’s the only tie I can see between him and the Sharpes. Peter Horner and his two Russian friends aren’t interested in art.” Colin noticed that Yank was all but pacing now. “If you asked Emma for her source, would she tell you?”

“I’m not asking.”

“Because you want to trust her?”

“I do trust her. She’s analytical, intelligent. She’s not a black-and-white thinker. She sees the shades of gray in a situation.”

“She’s not like anyone else on your team.”

“That’s not a negative.”

Colin stood, ignoring a twinge of pain in his lower back. A bruise had blossomed on his forearm, and when he had changed clothes, he had noticed a nick on his right temple. “What’s your best guess, Yank? Did Emma put herself in danger to find me?”

“I don’t like to guess, but I get nervous when emotion enters into a decision. You operate on instinct and experience. You’re good at reading people. Emma…”

“Emma gives people a lot of rope, and she was worried about me.”

“Your whole family was worried.” Yank seemed to give himself a mental shake. “Emma can handle herself. Come on. We have a flight to catch.”

“Where are we going?”

“Washington. The Director wants to see you.”

Colin wasn’t surprised but had no desire to board a flight to Washington. “I’m not finished, Yank.”

“Don’t start second-guessing yourself. We have more than we had a month ago. If you hadn’t gone overboard when you did, you’d be dead now.”

“No kidding.” Colin grinned. “Why do you think I braved the snakes and gators?”

Yank sighed. “What was I thinking? You never second-guess yourself.”

They crossed the bright, elegant living room and went up three steps to a wide front door. “Is Lucy in Washington?” Colin asked.

“Paris. She’s shopping with her sister.”

“You didn’t want to go?”

“No, but it doesn’t matter because I wasn’t invited.” Yank opened the door with more force than was needed. “I don’t see me in Hermès, do you?”

Colin followed him out into the South Florida heat and humidity. “What happens when Lucy and her sister get back from Paris? Is Lucy moving up to Boston with you?”

Yank’s expression was unreadable. “I’m on a need-to-know basis, and I guess I don’t need to know.”

They walked over to a black sedan idling in the driveway. Colin glanced at the lush, professionally landscaped yard, vines curling over a tall fence, a stone fountain bubbling amid colorful flowers. Suddenly he couldn’t wait to be out of there. He would go to D.C. with Yank and talk to the Director of the FBI, but he wanted to be back in Maine. He wanted to enjoy a glass of whiskey with his brothers and Finian Bracken, and he wanted Emma.

Not in that order, he realized.

Emma was first.

3

EMMA BROUGHT HER red sable brush, saturated with cerulean-blue watercolor paint, to the dampened paper she had clipped to the easel on the back porch of the Sharpe house in Heron’s Cove. She pulled the brush across the paper, right to left, practicing a simple flat wash and, out of the corner of her eye, watching the woman down on the docks. She had looked up at the house several times. She was small, with long, straight dark hair, and she wore a pumpkin-colored barn jacket that, even at a distance, was obviously too big for her.

A Sharpe Fine Art Recovery client? A sightseer who had wandered down to the waterfront and now was trying to figure out how to get back out to the street with its attractive houses, shops and restaurants?

Emma noticed her cerulean-blue was leaking down the page into her burnt-sienna. Probably should have stuck to one color. Perfecting a flat wash wasn’t as easy as it looked. In the weeks since Colin had gone after his arms traffickers, she had started taking painting lessons with Sister Cecilia, a young novice with the Sisters of the Joyful Heart. She and Emma had become friends since their encounter with a crazed killer in September. The lessons at the sisters’ shop in the village were therapeutic for both of them, and always followed by a walk, tea or just a good chat. Sister Cecilia especially loved hearing the latest about Rock Point and the Donovans.

Yank had called an hour ago. He and Colin had arrived in Boston and were on their way to Maine. Yank would drop Colin off in Rock Point. Then he was on his own.

No handing over the phone to Colin to say hello. Not Yank’s style.

Colin, Emma knew, would want to know about her source. He would have figured out the tip about the Fort Lauderdale house had come from her, or Yank would have told him outright.

She stood back from her painting, her brush in hand. Not her best effort.

A lobster boat drifted from the open ocean through the channel into the tidal river. It was late on a still, cool autumn afternoon. Several pleasure boats had passed by, heading to the marina and adjacent yacht club, but there were fewer boats now, with the colder weather and the foliage past peak. In midsummer, Heron’s Cove would be bustling with boats and people.

Colin had been a lobsterman in his teens, before joining the Maine state marine patrol. Emma didn’t know why he had decided to become an FBI agent. Boredom? Ambition? A precipitating incident? An unsolved case?

How could she have fallen for a man about whom she ultimately knew so little?

She had showered and changed in Colin’s house that morning, putting on fresh jeans and a sweater she had brought up from Boston. She’d had little sleep, dozing in his bed. When she got word that he was safe, she called Mike Donovan, then Finian Bracken, and let them know all was well and Colin would return to Rock Point later today.

She had stopped at Hurley’s for coffee and a cider doughnut and took them with her to Heron’s Cove. A run on the beach, a visit to a local apple orchard, a stop at her brother Lucas’s house to check on his cats while he was away—it had been a long day. She had known she wouldn’t hear from Colin until he was fully debriefed and back home.

The woman in the pumpkin-colored jacket had circled up to the retaining wall and was squeezing past tall hydrangeas, their white blossoms turned burgundy with autumn, into the Sharpe yard.

Emma set her brush in a jar of water on a small dresser against the back wall of the covered porch and stood at the rail. “Hi, there,” she called down to the woman. “It’s a beautiful afternoon, isn’t it?”

“It is. And it’s a beautiful place.” The woman spoke with an accent that Emma couldn’t immediately place. “You’re Emma Sharpe, yes?”

“That’s right. What’s your name?”

“Tatiana,” she said, crossing the yard to the porch. “Tatiana Pavlova.”

Emma stiffened at the Russian name, what she now realized was a Russian accent with a British undercurrent, as if Tatiana Pavlova had learned English on the streets of London. “What can I do for you, Tatiana?”

She started up the porch steps. “You mind?”

“Just keep your hands where I can see them, okay?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. You’re an FBI agent. You must worry about villains.”

Villains? “Are you a Sharpe client?” Emma asked.